The theory of cosmopolitanism is built on a paradoxical commitment to a universal idea of humanity and to a respect for human pluralism. Toward an Imperfect Education critiques the assumed "goodness" of humans that underwrites the idea of humanity and explores how antagonistic human interactions such as conflict, violence, and suffering are a fundamental aspect of life in a pluralistic world. This book proposes that the inescapable difference between humans compels our ethical and political observations in education. Todd persuasively argues that facing humanity in all its complexity and imperfection ought to be a central element of the cosmopolitan project to create a more just and humane education. Informed primarily by poststructural philosophy and feminist theory, she focuses on how sexual, cultural, and religious difference intersect with universal claims made in the name of humanity. Individual chapters develop a novel framework for dealing with antagonism in relation to human rights, democracy, citizenship, and cross-cultural understanding.

Noah De Lissovoy is Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies in Education at the University of Texas Austin. He is the author of Power, Crisis, and Education for Liberation: Rethinking Critical Pedagogy, which won the Critics Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association.

Alexander J. Means is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Psychological Foundations of Education at SUNY Buffalo State College. He is the author of Schooling in the Age of Austerity: Urban Education and the Struggle for Democratic Life.

Kenneth J. Saltman teaches at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. He is the author most recently of The Gift of Education: Venture Philanthropy and Public Education (Palgrave Macmillan 2010), which was awarded a 2011 American Educational Studies Critics Choice Book Award, The Failure of Corporate School Reform (Paradigm Publishers 2012),Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools (Paradigm Publishers 2007), which was awarded a 2008 American Educational Studies Critics Choice Book Award, and The Edison Schools (Routledge 2005). His recent edited collections include Education as Enforcement: the Militarization and Corporatization of Schools 2nd Edition, with David Gabbard (Routledge 2010), Schooling and the Politics of Disaster (Routledge 2007), and The Critical Middle School Reader, with Enora Brown (Routledge 2005). He received a Fulbright Scholarship in 2006 on Globalization and Culture and is a fellow of the National Education Policy Center.